And Now Back To Your Regularly Scheduled Swamp Weather
July 22, 2019, 12:14 p.m.
It's allegedly "cooling down" this week, if 80-degree weather strikes you as "cool."
Your weekly forecast: Less hot, but still pretty heckin' hot.
Some adjectives that accurately describe the weekend's ravaging heat wave: Suffocating. Broiling. Soggy. Scorching. Blistering. Unyielding. Dark (due to widespread, deliberate blackouts), but also blinding (due to the sinister, single-minded, blazing sun). Mind-melting. Eviscerating.
Temps peaked around 110 in Times Square on Saturday, and then a totally unreasonable 113 on Sunday, soaking you in an ever-present layer of sweat (and, let's be real, tears) that sent the sunscreen streaming off your body in milky beads as soon as you applied it. Brutal! Absolutely brutal.
But now, all that is behind us. (Unless you are among the approximately 21,000 Con Ed customers still waiting for your power to come back on, in which case, I am so so sorry.) As the heat wave recedes into the horrible hot sea whence it came, we can look forward to... slightly less stifling conditions this week, still soupy and even swamp-like, just not as sweltering as those we saw over the weekend.
The National Weather Service expects temperatures to hit 82 degrees this afternoon, while the heat index tops out at 85. Things may cool off to about 72 tonight, aided by the torrential downpour looming on the horizon. We're looking at a chance of rain until about 3 p.m., and then thunderstorms off and on, beginning around 4 p.m. The mini monsoon looks likely to continue through Tuesday morning—a flash flood watch will be in effect from noon today until 8 a.m. tomorrow—to be replaced by moody cloud cover throughout the afternoon. Think of it as a welcome respite from the overeager sun, with whom we spent way too much time this weekend, and from the dumb stupid heat: Tomorrow's low could dip to a temperate 66 degrees, with a high of just 72. Ha!
Things could begin to pick up again on Wednesday, though, as the heat index climbs to 79 and the sun comes back to haunt us. By Thursday, we can expect temps to work their way from the low (but humid) 70s, early in the morning, to the low 80s by the afternoon. From there, The Weather will continue to coast along these gentle peaks and valleys, with highs in the upper 80s this weekend, and scant chance of rain. So, on the bright side—literally, it will be very bright outside, and probably also pretty muggy—you will likely have a few winning beach days at your disposal.
Anyway, we're inching toward peak sweat season, a.k.a. flying cockroach season, and I for one am already finished. Too bad, though, because summer isn't, not even close!
